


The Teddy Bear's Bride

by heatchatt



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Cora is very angry about her brother's love life, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 05:39:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1334107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heatchatt/pseuds/heatchatt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles gets his feet back under him and sinks tentatively into the seat across from Derek, “Uh, dude, you’re sparkly?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Teddy Bear's Bride

Stiles arrives at the coffee shop just a few minutes late and spots Derek almost immediately as he walks in. He calls out, “Yo, Derek,” in greeting, then trips on the mat in the entryway when Derek turns to fully face him.

Stiles gets his feet back under him and sinks tentatively into the seat across from Derek, “Uh, dude, you’re sparkly?”

And he was. Derek was very sparkly. Glitter smeared across his cheeks and forehead, in his beard, his hair, his eyelashes. Wobbly lines of it painted over and around stripes of lace on his shirt.

Derek tightens his jaw a little, and brings his eyebrows up challengingly when he says, “I got married today.”

Stiles opens his mouth to respond, but ends up just gaping at Derek for several seconds before he can think of anything to say, “I’m, uh, I’m sorry to have interrupted?” He blinks quickly, as if the shimmer all over Derek were something he could clear out of his eye, “Uh, so um--hey! How come I wasn’t invited?”

Derek shrugs, and lounges back in his seat, “It was a small family affair.”

Stretched back the way he is, sparkling in the late afternoon sun streaming through the shop’s large front windows and hooding his eyes against the light, he looks absolutely pornographic. Stiles is more than a little angry about it, having spent last night and this morning and earlier this afternoon assuring himself that there was no way Derek was actually as good looking as Stiles remembered him being. But here he is, seeing Derek’s sculptured face turn something that should have been ridiculous into something enchanting instead. His tongue sticks in his mouth when he says, “So, what? That doesn’t include pack outliers now?”

“I wasn’t in charge of the guest list,” Derek’s mouth is hidden behind his coffee cup as he takes a drink, but Stiles can see the fucking smirk in his eyes. “Might have been an oversight.”

“Must have been,” Stiles leans forward, tries not to think too much about the flecks of glitter trembling at the corner of Derek’s mouth where he’s holding back a smile. “Do I at least get to crash the reception? I’m assuming that’s why you’re still in your--your, uh, formal wear.”

Derek plucks at his shirt, sending a shower of glitter onto the floor. “Probably not, the groom went to naptime with the officiant right before I left, so celebrating the wedding now seems in poor taste,” he’s still trying not to smile, but though he’s managing to keep his mouth straight it shows all around his eyes, obviously too amused with himself to keep it all back. Stiles feels like his insides are moving into crash position around his heart, because now Derek is enchanting and adorable and Stiles feels a little lost because this was supposed to be business. He was going to fill Derek in on how he intended to do things as the pack emissary, the changes to the standing tradition that he and Scott had agreed on. He was going to address any concerns that Derek might have about the new approach, maybe casually slip in how good it was to see him again. How glad Stiles was to be back in Beacon Hills for good, how much he’s appreciated the occasional email over the years of his studies abroad, but maybe Derek would be free Friday to catch up properly?

Instead Stiles is facing down evidence that the moment for that is probably long past, feels like he's pushing a wad of cotton out of his mouth when he croaks out, “Please tell me there’s pictures.”

Derek puts on an expression that Stiles assumes is supposed to be apologetic, but mostly looks smug. “Wedding of the century,” he says, “You just had to be there.”

“No way,” no way can Stiles be expected to deal with imagining Derek’s perfect little family that no one had bothered to mention to him over the next who-knows-how-many days or weeks until he has to meet them officially. He needs information to prepare himself! Getting blindsided by what appears to be be precious, patient stepfather Derek Hale today is all the surprise he can handle on that front. God, maybe Marlene had three or four kids, and Stiles might see him on a playground one day in the near future, a child hanging from each arm, another monkeying up his waist.

Derek who is laughing at him now, flecks of light reflecting off his hair as he shakes his head a little and digs his phone out of his pocket. “I’m sure Cora got some,” he says, “She had to promise Jesse to document Janna’s every move since he couldn’t make it up to visit with her.”

And--Scott had totally mentioned that. That Cora and her daughter had flown up from Guiana to visit, nominally to celebrate Stiles' return. That was why Derek hadn’t been around last night when Stiles had gone over this with everyone else, he had been picking them up from the airport. Stiles had actually bitched about it at length at the time, but completely forgotten when the sight of a glitter-covered Derek Hale has laser-fired through his brain.

“Here you go, Cora took some video,” Derek leans across the small table, turning his body so his shoulder bumps into Stiles’ and they can both see the screen of his phone, where a dark-haired six-year old is tossing a handful of glitter over Derek, who kneels in the grass holding the forepaws of a new-looking caramel-colored teddy bear. Stiles chokes on a laugh, feeling a little hysterical and a lot too warm. He’s literally spent hours of his life watching puppies on YouTube, and never had his heart feel this swollen in his chest. He cuts his eyes over to Derek, who’s started a second video where Janna is imperiously instructing him to repeat after her. Derek’s face is very soft. Stiles feels his heart expand just little more inside his chest.

Stiles clears his throat and abruptly straightens up in his seat. “We, uh--we have some business to go over before, uh, before too late. You’ll probably want to go home and clean up before the barbeque tonight.”

Derek looks startled, then chagrined as he retracts fully back into his seat. Stiles fixes his eyes on a smudge of glitter on the table, where Derek had been resting his elbow. “Right,” Derek says, “Of course.”

* * *

Two years ago, Stiles had been studying ancient werewolf lore in the Cevannes when this whole mess had kicked off. He was half-heartedly looking for coffee cups in Anne’s kitchen, mostly distracted by the view of her legs emerging from the hem of his discarded flannel, when he got the message.

_email my brother, dickwad, he’s worried about you_

He didn’t recognize the number, but his social circle was pretty thin on sibling pairs, so he could venture a guess.

_talked to Scott for like 2 hrs last night, p sure word of my fineness will get around_

“Is it hard?,” Anne had asked, gesturing at his phone, “Staying connected with people in other time zones?”

“Nah,” he’d said, tossing his phone on the counter as Cora responded with _just fucking do it stilinski_. Stiles hooked his chin over Anne’s shoulder and ran his hands down her arms to “help” with breakfast. Wondered what the hell he’d write to Derek.

* * *

When Stiles gets back to his apartment, he weaves his way through the stacked boxes he’s barely thought about unpacking and pitches face first onto his couch. He squeezes his eye shut until he sees spots, trying to blot out the image of Derek smirking at him, eyes bright and laughing in his smug, sparkly face. It useless though, and he’s a little concerned that his brain may have cleared out several long, painfully acquired years of academic storage to make room for multiple redundant copies of Derek’s soft, shimmering face. He screams into the cushion a little bit, pushes with his toes until face is pressed into the back joint.

He’s still attempting to smother himself in the V of the couch several minutes later, when Scott lets himself in.

“Dude,” he says, and Stiles jerks so hard he tips himself onto the floor.

Scott perches on the armchair, years and years past the _what the fuck, weirdo_ Stiles endures from newer acquaintances. He’s patient while Stiles shakes his head clear, sits up.

“Wanna tell me how it went?,” Scott asks, and pats Stiles’ hair when he groans and tips his forehead into Scott’s knee.

“You should have warned me,” Stiles tells Scott’s shin.

“Warned you about what?”

Stiles sighs and meets Scott’s eyes, “I think he married his niece’s teddy bear.”

“I--that’s, um, I didn’t know about that?” Scott’s wearing his _maybe you should draw me a map_ expression, and Stiles groans some more and throws himself back onto the ground. He smushes his face into the carpet, promises himself he’s going to shampoo it regularly because it’s actually sort of nice right now, new and fresh. “So, uh, but he was cool with the new stuff we wanted to try? This,” he taps Stiles slumped from with his toe, “isn’t pack adjacent?”

Stiles rolls onto his back and swats at Scott’s foot, “Huh? Oh yeah, he said he didn’t really know much about the emissaries. That for anyone who wasn’t the alpha, the old legends were really all there was to go on. Given his general opinion of Deaton and Morrell, not really surprising he’d be open to me rewriting the role.”

“Yeah, I figured he’d be cool with it, but I don’t like to rely on assumption for that kind of thing,” Scott toes off his shoes and drops sideways into the chair. “Now, what’s this about a teddy bear wedding?”

* * *

A year ago, Stiles had still been in France, and only just beginning to realize what a problem he had. One evening, his usual skype chat with Scott draws out a little long, mostly spent with Scott trying to describe the mammoth-dinosaur-big foot that had been trying to nest in the Nemeton stump and eating errant hikers. “Kill it with fire?,” Stiles guessed.

“I’m not sure how I feel about immolation being our calling card,” Scott sounded so genuinely down about it, that Stiles decided to cheer him up with a humiliating story of getting picked up by the cops after falling asleep on a guy mid-blowjob. Scott laughed hard enough to sound breathy when he said, “C’mon, dude.”

“I just want you to know that I’m not slacking off over here. Just because there are no Yetisauruses here in France doesn’t mean I’m not a busy dude with lots of problems.”

When he hung up with Scott, he grabbed a beer and a monograph on lunar cycles, checked his email on his phone as he settled into the couch. There was a new message from Derek that read: _Tied up in the preserve most of the weekend, but I was still able to make it to the farmer’s market. Marlene agreed to show me how to make those bran muffins she always sells out of. We are working out a date._

Stiles choked out a single, sharp note of disbelieving laughter and texted Cora, _derek is the worst pen pal_.

_it’s good for him_ , Cora sent back immediately, _suck it up_.

Stiles mouthed "tied up in the preserve" to himself, and wrote to Derek: _maybe look into a storytelling workshop, buddy._

* * *

Cora is on him as soon as he’s through the gate to Scott’s backyard, greets him with a hissed, “The fuck, Stilinski?”

Stiles stumbles back through the gate and Cora follows him out, shutting it behind her while Stiles was attempting to get the potato salad and case of beer in his arms back to equilibrium. As soon as he gets them settled, Cora gives his elbow a hard shove and sets him juggling again, “Seriously, how did you manage to screw this up? I literally giftwrapped him for you. Literally! You think that was easy for me?”

“Easy for you? How ‘bout this? If there’s something you want me to do for you, _Hale_ , maybe give the cryptic hints a rest and just tell me what you want?”

“What I want,” Cora pushes her face closer to his, and Stiles pulls the case of beer in front of his chest like a shield as her voice dips low and takes on a not entirely human rumble, “is for this bullshit between you and Derek to be settled by the time my flight leaves.”

“What bullshit? Why can’t you just say--,” he cuts himself off when Cora stabs a finger at his face.

“Because I know you know what I’m talking about.”

Some of the fight goes out of him at that, but he’s still so angry, it’s so _shitty_ of her, “So what, then? This is just about humiliating me? So Derek and _Marlene_ from the farmer’s market--”

“What does Marlene have to do with _anything_?”

“You know,” but Cora just shoots her eyebrows up in Hale code for _your explanation is woefully inadequate_. “You have to know,” he says, miserable, “Her thing. Derek’s thing. With her.”

“Her thing,” Cora repeats, “Derek's thing.” She looks momentarily nauseous, and her fingers twitch ominously at her sides. “Marlene,” she says, eyes closed, deliberately patient, ”is 75. She pinches his cheeks.” She opens her eyes and stabs her finger at his face again, “Make. Your move.” She vanishes through the gate while Stiles tries to mop up what’s left of his brain after imagining Derek Hale getting his cheeks pinched. She’s probably a tiny, stooped lady. He probably bends down to accommodate her.

Jeez.

Stiles makes his way into the yard and drops his contributions by the stack of coolers on the porch before making his way over to the grill where Scott is flipping burgers. Scott returns his fistbump, but just frowns and shakes his head when Stiles jerks his shoulder towards his ear and his thumb towards the gate where Cora confronted him. Stiles stays by Scott, but his eyes keep drifting to where Derek is belly-up in the sandbox with Janna packing sand around his shoulders.

“For fu-rick’s sake, Derek,” Cora says sweeping in and taking Janna onto her hip, “I really need you to learn when it’s a good time to say ‘no’ to her.” Janna kicks and tries to twist herself back towards the sandbox, but Cora just says, “Nuh-uh,” and starts toward the house. “We’re gonna get you cleaned up, and then we’re gonna get you a hot dog.”

“Okay,” Janna says, magnanomous.

Stiles dodges the pointed look Cora shoots at him, but makes his way over towards the sandbox as Derek scuffs a hand over the back of his head, knocking a small shower of sand loose. He jerks his shirt over his head just as Stiles goes to speak, and his ears go bright red as Stiles attempts to dislodge his tongue from the back of his throat. Derek gives his shirt a couple quick snaps and pulls it back on, says, “What was that?”

“Uh,” Stiles croaks, coughs roughly, “So,uh--how’s teddy bear matrimony treating you?”

“Is that a question for both of us?,” Derek indicates the picnic tables with a cock of his head. Stiles see a soft tan teddy bear in a blue bow tie at the head of one of the tables, as glitter-covered as Derek had been at the coffee shop earlier.

“That the lucky guy?,” Stiles asks.

‘Well,” Derek swings his hands as if to stuff them in his jacket pockets, drops them awkwardly when he realizes he’s not wearing a jacket. “Hard to say how lucky he is, yet,” he says, red creeping from his ears across his cheekbones.

“Not so hard,” Stiles lies, voice thick. “He’s lucky,” he says, when Derek meets his eyes, not sure if he’s whispering or shouting. “I was wondering--since I missed the ceremony, I was wondering if I could get a ‘speak now’ moment.” Derek’s mouth is soft and open, and he steps closer to Stiles. “I’m, ah--I might not be ready to hold my peace. Not just yet.”

Derek glances over his shoulder to where Cora is trying to convince Janna to exchange the bear for a hot dog. He glances back at Stiles, his lashes low, shy. “This might be your last chance,” he says, wets his lips, “I don’t know how much of a window I have for second thoughts.”

“Are you--are you having second thoughts?”

“The wedding was pretty sudden,” Derek says, smiling just a little.

“Yeah, seems like. I’d hate to think you were pressured, or that you agreed because you didn’t think you had any other options.”

Derek laughs, quick and low, “Oh, I was pressured, alright. But there’s really--there’s just one other option really. That I’ve been holding out for.”

“We should--I mean, you should,” Derek shakes his head just a bit, and Stiles feel a little like he’s suffocating. “We?,” he tries, “We should explore that option.”

“I was hoping we could,” Derek says looking down where his hand is held out, palm up, low and tentative.

“We should explore that option right now,” Stiles says, dizzy and elated as he slides his own palm across Derek’s. Derek’s fingers curl around his, and Stiles tugs him towards the gate, “Let’s get out here for a sec.”

* * *

Six months ago Stiles had started in on the last set of texts that he had to translate, and set a move-out date for his apartment in the Cevannes. He found himself cross-legged on the couch one night, laptop in the cradle of his knees with a blank reply to Derek’s latest email open on the screen. Derek had been helping Marlene with her baking more and more, helped her with transportation and setup at the market, too. Joined a book club with her.

_I can’t picture you at a farmer’s market_ , Stiles had responded the first time Derek had mentioned it, but that’s not true anymore.

Derek’s provided him enough details at this point that he can definitely picture it. Can’t stop, really.

* * *

“Mmmm, we’re lucky Mr. Bear didn’t make me sign a prenup.” Stiles focuses on the feel of Derek’s lip brushing against his own as he speaks, on the warmth of Derek’s waist in his hands and the coolness of the Jeep against his knuckles.

“I’m pretty sure polygamy laws don’t apply to teddy bears, anyway,” he says and presses back in with his hips, chest, lips. There’s a few stray grains of sand still caught in Derek’s beard, the corner of his mouth, and Stiles can’t help but imagine that they’d catch the moonlight if he pulled back to look.

He doesn’t pull back.

**Author's Note:**

> on tumblrrrrrr as chattaheathie, if that's your scene


End file.
